User blog:Weedle McHairybug/Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots = anti-Christian?
I was mulling some things over, and at the risk of violating the whole religion and politics ban, I noticed that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and to some extent Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots seemed to have a bit of anti-Christian propaganda in addition to the more well-known anti-American propaganda. You might disagree with me and view me as a nut after this, maybe even ban me for breaking the religion and politics ban, but at least hear me out, because there are some points that need to be addressed as to how it seems to be pushing said propaganda. It basically relates a lot to the Patriots, as well as to some extent Raiden and Solidus' backstory, also Solid Snake as well to some extent: 1. The Patriots First, we need to get into the premise of the Patriots. In the game, they are this super-secret governmental conspiracy secret order that is supplying instructions right to the top of the chain, the President of the United States, and was heavily implied throughout the game to be totalitarian in nature. Nearing the end of the game, however, the Patriots (possibly their AIs, later confirmed in MGS4 to be such) contact Raiden, and they give the impression that they are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and immortal. Specifically, none of the characters were actually able to mount any effective resistance to the Patriots (in fact, most of their resistance only served to ultimately benefit the Patriots instead of actually hurting them), they manipulated pretty much every single character in the game and more (yes, even Philanthropy and possibly Liquid Snake were strongly implied to have been manipulated by the Patriots) for various plans, most notable being the S3 Plan, which as they stated was a resounding success, they effectively implied that they are America, its ideals, and everything about them, and they were also implied to have manipulated groups that aren't American as well (specifically, the Gurlukovich Mercenaries), and, as Raiden put it, they are immortal. Kojima also mentioned that the Patriots had been created specifically to not make Solidus Snake the absolute bad guy (which gave off the implication that he considered the Patriots to be pure evil and the true villains of the story). By itself, this would probably mean nothing, but the remaining points together with it would probably indicate something, which leads into my next point: 2. Solidus Snake, the Army of the Devil, Raiden, and his coup As noted above, Solidus Snake was not intended by Kojima to be the absolute bad guy in the franchise, which explained why he created the Patriots. During Raiden and Solidus' meeting onboard Arsenal Gear, Solidus basically expounds to Raiden his past as one of Liberia's child soldiers during the civil war gripping the country at that time. Solidus was (presumably) leading several children into the battlefield himself during his youth in that war. What struck me as odd was the name of his group: The Army of the Devil. The Army of the Devil, I presume, is a fictional group in the series, though the name still strikes me as odd. Had it been a real life group, I could let it slide, but since its a fictional group, that means the name is made up. There are plenty of names that could give the implied war-like motivations of Solidus' group, like The Army of Mars, or the Army of Artemis, the Army of the Dragon, or something like that. However, the name chosen was one of the names of a creature in the Abrahamic religions that was once one of God's best Archangels, yet rebelled and became Satan. This seemed to go in odds against Solidus's official position as being a "lesser of two evils" as Kojima seemed to imply. There was another part in the game that further struck me as odd: Namely, Solidus revealing that he murdered Raiden's parents, or rather, his motivations for doing so. He mentioned that the reason why he murdered Raiden's parents and raised him as his own was basically because he wanted to know if "and Solidus were really of someone else's creation." Considering his actions about overthrowing the Patriots and his motive rant near the climax earlier, and his referring to himself and Raiden as "monstrosities" in reference to what the Patriots called them, this suggests that Solidus, even back during the time of the Liberian Civil War, hated being a pawn of the Patriots and intended to overthrow them. These things together, if they are connected, would imply that Kojima wanted us to connect the Patriots with the Judeo-Christian God. Again, I might be really out of my gourd with this and have it completely wrong, though I'll need some better explanation for this if I am indeed completely wrong about this. 3. Les Enfants Terribles The Les Enfants Terribles project was a major part in the Metal Gear series, especially since MGS1. I won't comment on much regarding MGS1 and MGS2, but MGS4 is where things get interesting, and disturbing: MGS2 had implied earlier that the Patriots were responsible for LET (specifically, Solidus' rant about his motives), so there's not much surprise there for MGS4 in that regard, but what does end up shocking is basically how Solid Snake is almost being elevated to Neo-like status (which reminds me, I'm actually going to cover something in the Matrix Reloaded that was similar to something in Metal Gear Solid 2), almost a Christ-like figure (see Snake's confrontation with the Paradise Lost Army in Act 3, specifically their questioning whether Snake was "the one."). First of all, Jesus Christ is not a sinner, Solid Snake was a self-admitted sinner (Killer, more specifically) in the game (then again, Neo definitely was also a sinner, a severe one as well, which will be addressed later, same section). Second of all, the closest thing Solid Snake has to a true father (due to Big Boss effectively abandoning him at birth due to disgust at their cloning him without his knowledge) is the Patriots, due to the revelation that they had effectively molded him (and presumably the other LET clones) into being one of their tools for their domination of the planet. The Patriots domination, throughout MGS4 and to some extent MGS2 was treated as a very bad thing, and the organization itself as being very bad. It then gets to Snake effectively "killing" his father by uploading FOXALIVE to free humanity from the Patriots. In other words, its basically like claiming that Jesus Christ committed patricide against God the Father to free humanity, which would have been blasphemous teaching. Then again, maybe I'm really misinterpreting it, and someone correct me if I am deeply misinterpreting it (someone who is Christian, I mean). 4. The Matrix Reloaded and The Sons of Liberty Before I get started on this section, I might as well give the reader a brief description of what the Matrix trilogy is like, just in case they don't know about that franchise: The Matrix trilogy was a cyberpunk franchise that was first released in 1998 and ended in 2003 with three movies: The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions. The franchise entailed humans hacking into an AI network that was enslaving humanity and making them into a battery source, and their revolting against the AIs. The film franchise was made by the Wachowski Brothers, and basically delved into a lot of philosophy, and also did things in such a way that made Christians initially believe, at least with the first film, that it was a Christian film series with Christian allegories (namely, Neo being The One, similar to Jesus being the Son of God and Son of Man). It also spawned an online game and two video games, one of which took place between the first film and Reloaded, with the latter film actually referencing events from that game, as well as an anime called the AniMatrix. Neo, for being considered "The One," is definitely a sinner instead of the Son of God, namely due to cursing the Lord's name more than a few times, wanton killing, as well as his having sex and maintaining to selfish love (which the Wachowski Brothers ssemed to treat as a good thing. Even the Prequel Trilogy of Star Wars at least maintained that selfish love was a bad road to go on). Although the Matrix franchise is not directly related to the Metal Gear series at all, the reason why I brought it up for this essay is because there actually was something in the Matrix Reloaded that, coincidence or not, was eerily reminiscient to an event in Metal Gear Solid 2. More specifically, Neo's encounter with the Architect in the ending of Reloaded had some elements similar to Raiden's encounter to the Patriots in the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2. Basically, both characters had either planned on destroying a key object of the enemy for good (Neo going to the Source to destroy the Matrix and liberate the humans) or otherwise had already seemingly destroyed it for good (Raiden uploading Emma's worm cluster to take out GW, which had been implied to have wiped out the Patriots). Both also discovered the enemy's plans for humanity and their role in it after discovering that they had failed before they even started, with a program really lacking in empathy or emotions delivering this and scoffing human will. Granted, it is extremely unlikely that Kojima decided to base it off that scene (besides the fact that the development team had removed Dead Cell wearing sunglasses specifically to avoid copying the Matrix as Yoji Shinkawa stated in an interview, Reloaded, not to mention the Architect speech, would not be made until roughly a year, maybe two years, after Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty), but it is still a very eerie coincidence nonetheless. I should also point out that the Wachowski Brothers (note, at the time the film was made, Larry Wachowski had not become Lana Wachowski yet) stated that they had created the Architect specifically to serve as an allegory to the Christian God, not in a good way, and basically stated in the L.A. Times that they had wanted to make a "devastating critique of salvation stories", according to Communist scholar Cornel West. Speaking of West, they also gave him a role in that film, Councillor West, specifically because they were big fans of his work, something even Cornel West was basically shocked and baffled at. Anyways, that's basically what I've noticed about MGS2 and MGS4. As a Catholic, I really find that idea reprehensible (though then again, I'm also forced to consider the possibility that God might in fact be like that, especially seeing how Raiders of the Lost Ark basically gave me a lot of trauma and had really warped my views on serving God in a bad way). Now, hopefully, this is just a complete misunderstanding, but, I'm forced to think this may be what Kojima is pushing. On a closing note, the FreeRepublic once published an essay explaining how the Matrix franchise is effectively propaganda for Cultural Marxism and Anarchistic Nihilism, and cited stuff from the movies/entries themselves, as well as cast and crew statements on the filming process and even newspaper articles and old histories, including the LA Times article that was mentioned. In fact, that FreeRepublic article is what inspired me to make a similar article, that as well as some conflictions with God right now as to what he is. I definitely know He exists, though. EDIT: Okay, I discovered a while back that Metal Gear and the Matrix were actually directly connected: Turns out, not only are Hideo Kojima and the Wachowskis friends in real life, but Hideo Kojima even stated that he intended to explore future themes in one of his next games based on those pushed in the first film (and as the article was dated to 1999, it's safe to say he was thinking of Metal Gear Solid 2 when he said this). Weedle McHairybug (talk) 21:12, October 13, 2013 (UTC) Category:Blog posts